Weekly Update
This week we got some good news on the international front. As some
of you already know, the eMOLT program is a member of the Fishing Vessel
Ocean Observing Network (FVON). Like eMOLT, the other members of FVON
work to democratize ocean observing by empowering you, the fishing
industry, to collect data in a way that is useful to your businesses and
the broader scientific enterprise, including ocean forecasting and stock
assessments. Already, our international collaborations have yielded
improvements in sensor design (the Moana sensors that many of you have
were developed by our colleagues at the Moana Project in New Zealand)
and data pathways (the Moana Project team along with Ocean Data Network
are leading a charge to get fishing vessel data incorporated into global
weather and ocean forecasting data). The programs and people that make
up FVON applied for and were recently awarded recognition under the UN’s
Ocean Decade under the CoastPredict program of the Global Ocean
Observing System (GOOS). This will hopefully open doors to additional
funding opportunities and new collaborations. To learn more about some
of our international partners and their efforts, check out the links
below:
In keeping with our effort to provide better visualizations to our
industry partners, here’s an updated version of the zoomed in forecast
with 30, 50, and 100 fathom lines marked with white, gray, and black
lines respectively. On the regional forecast, we’ve made one plot with
all of the lines and one plot with just the 50 and 100 fathom lines so
it’s not so busy. Let us know what you think. Is it helpful to have
those lines, or is it useless clutter at the bigger scale?
We’re still working on vertical slices to look at the full water
column and building these out as shapefiles for integration into chart
plotters. Thanks again to Dr. John Wilkin for providing some resources
on this front, and thanks to the captains who wrote in with additional
suggestions. Building these tools is an interesting exercise for me, but
ultimately, as I said in our discussion group at the Cooperative
Research Forum, the goal is to make something that’s useful for all of
you who are actually collecting the data.
Baltimore to Spencer Canyon Bottom Temperature Forecast
